To the Table: Borderlands

Some of you may remember that post I did awhile back about tabletops and video games.  I had a lot of fun writing that post and a lot of you seemed to really like it.  So I decided to do a follow up series called To the Table where I'll analyze various video games and show why they would make good tabletops.  Also I will explain how I would translate some of the mechanics found in these games into a workable tabletop format.  First on the list is Borderlands.

For those of you who are not familiar with Gearbox's random gun generator with a first person shooter theme, Borderlands is a first person shooter role playing game with tons and tons and TONS of guns.  Shooting bandits and leveling up are satisfying and fun and the loot keeps flowing.  Furthermore, the Borderlands games are based in co-op.  Up to 4 players can work together to shoot their way through the planet of Pandora to get the best loot possible and find the legendary vault.  Some people might ask how would a first person shooter translate into a tabletop RPG?  Well think about tabletops like Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun.  Those are games that are kinda like what would happen if you translated a first person shooter into a tabletop.  But here are some good reasons why Borderlands would work.

First off: it's an RPG.  It may be a first person shooter, but at its core Borderlands is an RPG.  There are distinct classes, distinct powers for each class, distinct roles and ways to build each class, and a leveling system to progress through the game.
Second: it is built around co op.  Some games may say they are "co-op", but they're not built around actually helping each other.  Borderlands is one of those co-op games that really encourages the players to stick together and work together.  Help each other out and you will succeed magnificently.  Plus by having so many distinct ways of playing a character ensures that you will almost always be a necessary part of the team.
Third: a world to explore.  Pandora is massive.  There are a wide variety locales to visit, from dusty deserts, to luscious grasslands, to snowy tundras, to radioactive sludge pits, to eridium infested wastelands.  There are people to meet, things to see, stories to tell, and most importantly loot to find.  On top of that, if you don't want to use Pandora as the backdrop to your story (SPOILER ALERT), the ending of Borderlands 2 opened up the entire universe for your gaming pleasure.  Make up your own planet, stories, and characters to use.  No need for using the already given world.

Now how would you make this all work with a tabletop mechanically?  I have a few ideas.  First off you would need to determine a dice system to use for the game.  Easy: d100.  Why d100 you ask?  For gun-play.  All the guns in the Borderlands games have an accuracy rating on them to tell you in generally how wild your shot is gunna go when you pull the trigger.  So put that into a d100 system and roll below to the percentage to hit.  Easy peasy.  Next up I would say you would want an action point system in there.  Different actions take different amounts of time for different characters and different guns.  The system should recognize this and accommodate for it.  Hence action points.  Different tasks would require a different number of actions points, like reloading or firing different weapon types or switching guns.  Now the really tricky part would be maintaining that sense of fast paced action that a first person shooter has.  For that I would throw out the usual initiative system most tabletop RPGs have in favor of what I like to call simultaneous initiative.  Essentially you would have someone leading off the action, they would do whatever they're doin before everyone else.  Then everyone else declares their action.  All of these happen simultaneously.  If 2 actions conflict you roll off to see which happens first.  For example, if a psycho is charging at you to whack you over the head but you wanna run away and fire at him so he can't reach you, you would roll off to see which of those happens first.  Could be a mess could be absolute genius.  Anyway you would then need classes.  I would say have the Gunzerker, the Psycho, the Mechromancer, the Hunter from BL1, the Assassin, the Commando, and the Siren be your classes.   Each would have their own set of skills as well as some generalized skills that everyone could take or groupings of them could take.  For Sirens you would have a bunch of powers to choose from  but you could only pick one.  At this point you could go wild with powers so long as they were balanced and could be worked with.  As for how you would do guns, you would probably just make tables for generating random guns.  Heck, if you had someone good at programming you could probably make an app for GMs to randomly generate loot for their games.  Interesting idea that a friend suggested to me would be to generate the loot before game then put them on cards with all the gun stats that you would then give to players so they could actually hold all their guns and compare gun stats without having to flip through tons of pages of character sheets or write down tons of gun stats.

Anyway that's all of my ramblings on this.  Also just a note this is a thing!  I am currently designing this tabletop system and if you are interested in helping out post in the comments!

Thanks for reading!  As always leave a comment to let me know what you think of the blog!  Like the topic?  Let me know because I have more of these in mind that I could do.  Got an idea for a game you think could be translated into a tabletop?  Post it in the comments and I'll give my analysis of it guaranteed!   Signal boosting is always appreciated so post the link everywhere and invite your friends to read!

Gamer out.

Helpful Access

So my roommate told  me a little while ago that apparently the internet has been having a fit over Steam Early Access Games.  I thought it might be a good thing to talk about and here we are.  This may be a shorter post but I feel this needs to be talked about, so let's get down to it.

For those of you who don't know, or don't have steam, Steam Early Access Games allows developers to essentially sell people their games before they are actually done.  It's sorta a paid beta access or paid alpha access in some cases.  This is not terribly uncommon a practice, plenty of games in the past have given you beta access as a part of pre-order packages.  Steam Early Access Games just makes it easier for developers to do so and is an official system to do it.

The point that has got so many peoples' panties in a twist is a simple hypothetical possibility: what if you're just paying for a crappy game that will never be "finished"?  People are suspicious that this could just let developers release a half baked game and say it's in "beta" or "alpha" and then never really work on it to make money.  They'll say they are but they're really not and just collecting on the goodwill and trust of innocent gamers.  Now this is a legitimate concern.  This is an entirely possible outcome of this system and would be a despicable thing to do.  Some developers may do this to make a quick buck and this could potentially be a huge problem.

But then again lets look at all the positives to SEAG (Steam Early Access Games, I'm tired of typing all that out).  Actually first off let's look at the fact that, once again, pre-orders already do this.  People DO BUY games that are not yet completed in the form of pre-orders.  The difference is a pre-order doesn't always give you an instant gratification of being able to play the game in it's current build and being able to help the developers in making the game better.  Instead, a pre-order just gives you the promise of a game to come who's quality is unknown until you eventually get it.

Second of all there is a perfect example of early access games that has already been used to great success.  I'm talking about Minecraft.  Minecraft started selling back when it was still in alpha.  People bought it to support its continuous development as well as to give feedback to help it improve as it continued to be made.  Now Minecraft is one of the most well known and well loved games out there, and is STILL having updates being released for it. This is what early access is going for.  The model of early access does work, and gives fledgling indie developers the ability to market this more readily, which is fantastic.

Third, if you buy the game in it's early access stage, you are basically saying "yes I like this idea, I want this game to be a thing, and I want to make sure it comes out good."  It's like kick-starting a game except with instant gratification of access to the current build and the ability to give feedback to help perfect the game.  It's a good way to have more communication between developers and gamers as well as to make sure games that gamers want to be released get released in a better state.

Finally, if you support a game through early access you're helping a developer to continue to make the game.  Most of the developers who use early access are indie developers.  They may not have a huge budget, but they had enough to create this alpha/beta build.  From there the proceeds from purchases of the early access version gives them a budget to continue making the game.  In addition, as I said before, they have a much larger testing group for feedback on bug fixes and game updates.  In short, early access is one of the best things that can happen for an indie developer on a low budget.

In conclusion, SEAG is not some horrible monster that is going to eat all our money and give us nothing in return.  It's a good system for indie developers to continue getting interesting, unique, and fun games to us as gamers.  In addition, we become a much larger part of the development process, helping to make sure the games that we buy become quality products that all can enjoy.  So don't be fooled by the cynical paranoia of the internet, SEAG is a system that we should continue to support.

Thanks for reading!  As always post in the comments to discuss the topic further and give feedback!  If you want me to talk about a specific topic or review a game, let me know in the comments!  Signal boosting is always appreciated so share with your friends!

Gamer out.